


THE LAST OF US PART II | An Alternative Ending

by machinehead



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst, Death, Drowning, Ellie actually gets her revenge, Revenge, The Last of Us Spoilers, feel like pure shit just want joel back x
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:49:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24928699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/machinehead/pseuds/machinehead
Summary: The bliss mounts as she stares down at Abby's lifeless eyes staring back up at her in perpetual horror with her gaping mouth left open as her burning lungs forced her to breath in the water.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 30





	THE LAST OF US PART II | An Alternative Ending

**Author's Note:**

> My take on what The Last of Us 2's ending could have been.
> 
> As much as I understood what Naughty Dog was saying with the whole 'revenge is a cycle' thing, this is just going to be an alternative ending to the people who wanted Ellie to seek out revenge. Anyways, I hope you enjoy!

Ellie did it.

She slain the beast that took away the man that had given her a reason to keep breathing, or rather _was_ the man that kept her breathing in the wake of the fireflies' attempt at a cure for humanity. All of the blood, rage and death that had happened on the way to the promised land was not in vain. Jesse had died in Ellie's desperation for revenge, a newly found father to an unborn baby that he never got the chance to meet. Tommy lost a brother and an eye, as well as a marriage with his wife. So many countless innocent and evil people have died along the way to this very moment. The guilt will forever hold the girl in a choke-hold, it will forever hold a grudge, but she couldn't believe herself that she had a moment's hesitation before she buried Abby beneath the shallow water.

The flicker of Joel's calm presence watching her in the corner of her mind, holding onto his well-worn guitar that he had traded something for as he looked at her with some type of emotion she couldn't quite place. She didn't know what he was looking at her with. Was it fondness? Was it disappointment? Ellie squashed that image down and switched off her thoughts. It doesn't matter anymore, what's done is done.

But the flicker of Joel had reminded her of his smashed skull, brain matter splattered across the window behind him and across the floor beneath him, blood leaking from a broken face that was smiling at her only hours before, jumped to the surface. She clenches her teeth and tightens her jaw at the lost promise of rekindling their friendship after all the lies he told her. After all of the tension between them.

Abby's body lays limp beneath Ellie's trembling thighs that helped pin her down, her shaking fingers wrapped around her thick throat. There are goosebumps littering her skin from the cold weather and the icy water that is catching up to her now that the adrenaline of sneaking right into a base of psychopathic slave owners, unleashing tied up clickers that threatened to expose her position and finally drowning Abby had passed. The bite mark on the side of her hand from the clicker that had been caught in the trap, burns and itches, but she knows she'll be alright. For her curse of being immune to the virus will keep her from turning into one of them.

She did it. She actually did it. Covered in her own blood that stains her white, dirtied singlet in red from where she had been impaled by a protruding branch, reminiscent to the time Joel had been impaled when he had fallen from a high balcony. She sits on top of Abby, and stares down at her with a maniacal grin as she sobs openly. A strange mixture of emotions that has her wallowing in her mourning, for all the deaths and mayhem she had caused and swallowed down, finally allowing it to come free, but she is laughing and grinning sadistically at what she had finally done.

It's an outrageous and horrible sound that comes out of her. But it isn't nearly as horrible as the sound of Joel's screaming that keeps her up at night. Reminding her of the time she had shot a boar to bring back to the farmhouse to cook it up and eat it, but she didn't kill it properly. It laid there squealing in agony and begging for Ellie to shoot it again, but she couldn't bear the sound of it. She took off and let it die slowly, because the image of Joel screaming and crying out sounded just like that, and Ellie couldn't stay there any longer.

Tommy didn't think she'd do this. When Ellie showed hesitation to go after Abby again, he left in a fit. He felt betrayed, she wanted her dead just as much as he did in the beginning, and he knew he couldn’t go after her with his missing eye. But even when she got on Tommy’s bad side, she went ahead and killed Abby anyway. She felt like she was obligated to avenge Joel, even when a part of her wanted to leave it all behind. Every body was counting on her to do it. With this pressure and guilt treatment being thrown at her by him, she had to finish this.

She doesn't even think she'd ever be able to come back from this. She'd gone too far, had fallen from grace, had completely lost herself. She thought she was the hero of the story, but she came to realize she was just as evil as everyone else. But there was no good guy in this story -- just survivors. 

So many thoughts had been rushing through her head the moment she started looking for Abby again, but right now, they're silenced. It was finally over. The few minutes of bliss is foreign for Ellie. She had gone so long without it that she forgot what it felt like.

The bliss mounts as she stares down at Abby's lifeless eyes staring back up at her in perpetual horror with her gaping mouth left open as her burning lungs forced her to breath in the water.

Blood stains Ellie's mouth and teeth, and she's sure she's missing a couple from Abby's hard hits. The woman was a powerhouse, possibly the most muscular chick Ellie had ever seen, and she's sure from the base she was running with, W.L.F, with it being a military faction, it shouldn’t be a surprise that she was massive and knew how to throw a hit. But even when she had been strung up on the pole and starved for however long she had been in captivity for, Abby was still strong enough to hold her own, but not strong enough to take Ellie down in the end.

Ellie briefly thought it wasn't a fair fight at first, and how easy it would have been for Ellie to just shoot her right in the head and have it be over with or slit her stomach open like the Seraphites did when she was strung up on the pole, but it wouldn't be satisfying until Abby felt the same pain Joel did until her dying breath.

It took Ellie weeks to get to her. Living off no sleep as she kept watch for any infected, or because she didn't want to waste time, and living off barely any food, because she couldn't manage to keep down what little food she had. Her anxieties from being alone shot through the roof, and she couldn't stomach food. Ellie had dropped a few pounds and had grown considerably weaker and lighter. But she had trained her body to not take as much food, and be able to tolerate the pang of hunger.

Her stomach had been cramping with combined hunger and nervousness when she was sneaking around the Rattlers base. From what she’d seen, they relished in the power of owning prisoners they could play around with. One of them had escaped and shot themselves in the head to avoid going back there when the gang tracked them down. They had infected tied to chains like vicious dogs -- it seemed almost cruel. But it gave Ellie a good advantage when she undid the chains and allowed the monsters to wreak havoc, killing as many as it could before it got mowed down and Ellie could resume. She had taken down far too many people to back out before she could meet Abby again. With the cultists, the W.L.F, and this new gang. It would be a waste of _'precious'_ life if she didn't finish what Abby started.

The fight was brutal. Abby looked like she had gone through hell from being in captivity. Her cheekbones had sunken in, her eyes were bloodshot, her skin was burnt and flaking from being stuck under the harsh, relentless sun. Ellie looked like the harbinger of death. She saw nothing but red as they circled each other in the shallow, dark water like sharks. She had slashed and diced Abby with her trusty switchblade that had been with her since the beginning, her blood mingled in with the ocean's salty tears. While Ellie swiped and stabbed, Abby punched, but no matter how weak the woman had become, her hits still felt like the bricks she would throw to distract her enemies. They both took turns with their wild hits and their tackles after Abby had smacked the blade out of Ellie’s hands. It was only when Ellie got the upperhand that she pinned Abby beneath the surf, and it was then that her fingers had been torn off by Abby’s teeth when they had slipped into her mouth. 

Ellie almost felt guilty at how morbidly fascinated she was when Abby began to kick and scratch and claw -- her survival instincts pushing into overdrive to escape from Ellie’s clutch. It was an entire display of power that had made her feel dizzy with how much she found herself to enjoy it. She wondered if this was how Joel felt whenever he killed someone, or if it was just her. She wondered if this was how Abby felt when she killed him.

She felt less guilty when she thought of Abby enjoying watching and listening to Joel scream.

But once the deed was done, after Ellie squashed down the image of Joel playing his guitar, and Abby’s final breath bubbled to the surface, mixing in with the bloody seawater below her as her movements slowed down, did she start to laugh. 

The laugh was one of relief that this was finally over. A part of her knew that killing Abby wouldn't help her move on from Joel, she knew she was never going to grow from this and she was forever going to be fucked up from what she had committed. But her thoughts were silenced.

Her severed digits are floating somewhere nearby -- the fingers she needed to use when playing the guitar Joel had given her. She holds her bloodied hand to her chest and sulks pathetically, putting pressure on the bloody nubs where her fingers should be, knowing Abby had shredded that connection Ellie had left with Joel. 

She wants to go home, but the thought of moving to begin that long trek back right now is unbearable. She’s exhausted beyond compare. She almost wishes she never came, but she knows that if she never killed Abby, she would never be able to sleep again. This is her closure and she deserves it. She deserves to be able to stomach the sight of food again, she deserves to sleep without the nightmares of Joel, she deserves to lay up next to her girlfriend and be held without thinking about how she was going to kill another woman.

She's out of breath, puffing madly as the adrenaline escapes through her mouth with each exhale. The pain in her fingers is going to be something she'll need to get used to, and especially the phantom pain she had heard from another survivor at Jackson who had his arm chopped off to prevent the infection from spreading when he had been bit. But right now, the pain in her fingers is an afterthought.

When her eyes fall on the boat that Abby was going to board and sail away on with that little boy, her eyes darkens. She isn't even sure if that kid is even alive at this point. He had taken a hell of a beating, and had been starving alongside Abby who had a greater chance at survival than he did. But she noticed how desperate Abby had been to get him untied from the post he was strung up on, and onto the boat, to keep him alive. It briefly reminded Ellie of how desperate Joel was to keep her safe all of those times when he was taking her across the country in search for the fireflies, and how desperate she had been to keep him alive when he had been impaled. There's a slight sting of guilt simmering in her chest somewhere at the thought of this little boy being alone, scared. Like she could have been.

She took away his protector, like Abby took away hers. The only difference was that Ellie was older now, whereas the kid was just a kid.

She wasn't sure whether or not she should just slit his throat and take him out of his misery, or worse, take off on the boat and leave him behind for the gang that had kidnapped and strung them up like Jesus on the cross to deal with.

She knows leaving him behind is pure evil, and it's something Joel would never do, even in his smuggler days when he was overly cautious of new people, didn't trust easily and was quick to shoot when something didn't feel right. Leading him to his mistake of trusting Abby. The four years they had spent in Jackson since the whole firefly mess, Joel had changed a lot. He had gotten used to the idea of being around people and letting his guard down, and breaking down his walls. But it also made him too trusting and willing to help strangers. He had forgotten about how evil people can be, or rather started to see the good in people, like Tommy did when he took his brother and Ellie in.

This little boy is just a kid, just like she was, caught up on the wrong side of evil. Joel would have done the same thing for Ellie. He would have gone to the ends of the earth to keep her safe, just like Abby did for the boy. And Ellie would have done the same for Joel.

If Ellie was the one to have her head caved in, Joel would have done the same thing.

She keeps imagining herself in the boy's shoes. What would she rather if someone had drowned Joel in murky water and she was left unconscious in a dingy old boat? Would she rather have her throat slit, or have her be captured and tortured again?

She decided she'd rather have her throat slit.

She knows it isn't her decision to make. To take away a young boy's life. It isn't a choice she could have a hand in choosing. But she was never really given a choice was she? Joel took that away from her. When she decided to give her life meaning by being the antidote for humanity, he stole her away from the hospital and lied to her face after she was given a chance to save people rather than kill. If she had the guts, she would have woken the little boy up and asked if this was what he wanted. Ask him a question that no one bothered to ask her. 

Was it crueler to let him try his hand at surviving on his own, or would it be crueler to just help him out by taking him away from this world? She would rather kill him when he's unaware, rather than force it upon when he woke up. She guesses she could understand why the fireflies never asked her if she was okay with it.

She rises from her position to unpin Abby and finds her switchblade somewhere beneath the surface, before making her way over to the boat. She's limping, and the water around her tired calves swishes and sways with her movements, burning at the wounds that decorates her thin legs. She looks down at the bundle of clothes resting inside the boat and sighs sadly. He's tiny, and looks much younger than he probably was. He's skin and bones, covered in bruises and cuts and the knobs of his spine jagged out like the blades of a dinosaur's spine. How long had they been there, strung up and starved? How long had they been captured for? Abby had lost most of her muscle mass and her usual braid had been chopped off. While Abby still massively out weighed Ellie in muscle, she still looked weak and tired. Thirsty and hungry.

It wasn't a fair fight, but did Ellie even have a chance at beating the woman without her already being almost dead? She gave her a run for her money at the theatre and that was enough to scare Ellie off for a time.

She shakes her head and squashes the thought down. Maybe it was cowardly for Ellie to kill her when she was already broken, but it wasn't like the death of Joel was honorable, either. At least Ellie asked for a fight.

She reaches over and presses her fingertips to the boy's throat, underneath his jaw, to check for a pulse and finds that he's indeed alive but the pulse is weak. He is either going to die from dehydration or starvation, and she figures dying slowly was a worse death than drowning.

She takes a deep breath and brings out her switchblade. The thought of killing a kid isn't something she desires to do. Even when she felt that odd electric zip in her body at the sight of overpowering Abby and pinning her beneath the water, where she felt unhinged and out of control, she's still in the right mind to realize how wrong it is to kill a kid. But she doesn't want to leave loose ends behind, and she doesn't want him to experience the horrors of the world without a companion to keep him safe when he awakens. That's what she keeps telling herself.

She couldn't bring him back with her, he would never trust her, and rightfully so. As soon as he wakes up, he'll shoot her in the back of the head with his bow and arrow. But if she leaves him alive, and he manages to survive, he'll come after her and the whole cycle of revenge will continue until someone breaks the wheel.

Joel killed Abby's dad and doomed humanity because he began to see Ellie as a daughter, a chance to experience being a father again after the title had been ripped away when Sarah was shot and killed the night of the outbreak. He refused to let the fireflies kill Ellie to reverse engineer a vaccine that humanity didn't even deserve. There was no coming back from what people have already done to survive. 

Joel didn't know anyone who he killed, he barely even remembered their faces. But Abby took it personally. In return, what was left of the fireflies disbanded and Abby had been left without a father. She spent four years searching for Joel and when she finally did, she killed him in the most traumatic and gruesome way that struck a hot burning coal of hatred and rage in Ellie. Perhaps Joel's death was justified, but not in the way it happened. And not so cowardly. They never even let him put up a fight, take him out in a dignified and honorable way. They blindsided him when he put his trust in a stranger -- something he had drilled into Ellie to not do.

All the times she had witnessed Joel take down an army of men on his own, she knew he could have easily taken down a group of cowards if he had the chance to defend himself. Perhaps that was why they did it. Perhaps they were scared of him.

Ellie in return hunted Abby down like she was the same deer she had tracked when she was a kid in the winter months, where she met David and butchered him later on. She killed all of her friends along the way. A woman choked on the spores that Ellie could breath, a blade went into another's throat, another got blasted in the head, she managed to kill a woman she didn't know was pregnant. But it's not like she intended on killing them in cold blood. The woman swung at her with a knife and Ellie acted in self defense. Same way she reacted with the guy who was the father of her baby. All of their deaths were justified in the name of justice, she wanted them to feel the pain and suffering Abby put Joel through.

And if Ellie keeps that boy alive, he'll come after her for killing Abby.

He's small, but so was Ellie when the world stole her innocence.

She brings the sharp blade to his throat and with a moment of hesitation, her trembling hands slice his skin open. She doesn’t listen to his gurgles as he whimpers and cries out in shock. His slender hands fly up to catch the blood spilling from the jagged line across the vulnerable skin there. She blocks out the feeling of guilt and cowardice, and the sounds of his death throes as she focuses on Abby, the woman who caused all of this. Her ears are ringing as though someone had blasted off a gun right beside her ear.

She had the kindness in her heart to bury the little boy in the sand. She wasn't going to give Abby a proper burial. She doesn’t deserve even that. She dug up the sand with her bare hands, as far as she could go and as much as she could handle with her newfound disability and carefully placed the boy in the hole before kicking the sand back over him.

Whatever horrors he experienced, just from looking at his face she's curious about what story and what life this boy led. He had a horrible scar running across his face on both cheeks, that looked as though he had been forced to smile. It went from the corner of his lips, all the way to his ears. The scar wasn’t clean, nor was it straight. It looked as though he had flinched while it happened. She recognizes it as a telltale sign of the fanatic cult called the 'Scars' or rather, The Seraphites. She wonders why Abby was wandering around with a scar, or trying to keep one alive at that if she was a part of the W.L.F.

But she'll never know what Abby went through, like she'll never know what Ellie went through.

\----

Ellie goes home.

When she returns home to the farmhouse Dina had been dreaming of, Ellie has a weird, sinking feeling sitting in her stomach. Even without entering the house, something feels off. She walks across the paddock of long, browning grass, and steps up the groaning wooden porch steps and opens the door, surprised to find it swinging open without resistance. Dina wouldn't just leave the door unlocked.

The sunken feeling returns when she finds that the house she lived in with her lover and son, J.J, is abandoned. The house holds no familiar warmth of love and family. Dina isn't in the kitchen washing the dishes, and J.J isn't napping in his cot upstairs. Still, she searches the entire house for them, but finds no trace, not even a note left behind letting Ellie know where they went. It was like they vanished, or they never truly existed, just a figment of her imagination. But she knows it was real, all the pain and suffering she went through to feel normal again was sure of it.

All of their belongings had been taken, and Ellie, in her self-denial, thought that maybe a raider had torn into their house and stolen everything. She doesn't want to believe that Dina up and left with J.J. This home is a shell of a house that had once been theirs, but now it might as well be filled with the ghosts of the people she killed.

This house wasn't raided. It's clear when she goes into their shared room. She finds that all that was left in the room is Ellie's pillow, and some sheets folded neatly on the bare mattress on their bed frame. Then she goes to her art study in the spare room and finds all of her belongings had been left behind. All of her posters, paintings, vinyls, easels and such, still remains. On her guitar case, sits the vinyl they had been dancing to.

The fact that Dina left behind Ellie's stuff hurt. It feels like it's over between them, that what she said before Ellie left wasn't a threatening tactic to guilt her into staying, she was telling the truth. Ellie can feel a familiar pain in her throat that was usually there when she's trying not to cry.

It's not like Ellie was expecting a welcome home party. But she would rather have anything but this. The unknown. The uncertainty. She would rather Dina hate her, or attack her from behind than come home to an empty house.

Dina didn't want to wait for Ellie to come back, and she said that. Right before she left. Dina was scared of Abby -- especially after the woman smashed the girl's head repeatedly into the ground at the theatre, and was going to slit her throat even after Ellie told her that Dina was pregnant. 'Good.' She had spat out, and the horrible feeling that destroyed Ellie at the implications behind that word was strong and powerful, but she was too weak and in pain to move. If it wasn't for that little boy who she had buried on the beach hadn't said something, Dina wouldn't be with her.

She was surprised Abby listened to the kid and didn't kill Dina right then and there. After all, Ellie killed her pregnant friend, did she not? Granted she didn't know she was pregnant, whereas Abby knew and was going to do it anyways. Eye for an eye, but Abby left the two of them there, and gave Ellie mercy for the second time.

But Ellie didn't stop. Abby might give her mercy, but Ellie wasn't as merciful.

After all the healing, Dina was terrified of Abby, and probably assumed Ellie was going to die going after her, especially after the close call she had at the theatre before Dina intervened. They both thought it was over, that they were finally going to move on from Abby and Ellie's thirst for revenge and live a normal life. But the more nightmares Ellie got, and the more traumatic episodes she experienced with the same scene replaying over and over again of her running down the stairs into the basement below to find Joel broken and bloody and lying on the floor in his own blood. With a shattered knee cap, and an indent in the side of his skull where the golf club connected. Knowing she couldn't help him and felt utterly powerless. The more she saw that in repeat as her brain tortured her, the more her anger got the better of her.

She wasn't going to rest until she had her revenge. At this point, avenging Joel meant more than family. Abby didn't deserve to continue to walk around on this earth and still draw breath knowing she tortured an old man to death. So when Tommy came around with a lead on a buff lady travelling with a small kid, Ellie jumped on the opportunity after an entire night of thinking on it.

Dina was gone by the time Ellie returned home. But she hopes that Dina had moved back to Jackson with J.J. Jesse's parents had implored them to come back so that they're closer by, and they can visit them more often without the risk of the infected, but Ellie and Dina both wanted some type of normalcy in a world that was far from normal. She hopes she went back.

Although, before Ellie was hot on Abby's trail, Tommy and Ellie had a falling out considering how hesitant she was to hit the road and follow that lead. Tommy wanted revenge for his brother just as much if not more than Ellie. But at this point, Dina and the baby mattered to her more. Tommy was a good man, but his thirst for vengeance overshadowed him, as it did with Ellie. The both of them walked right into a war Abby created, and they instigated further. With their rage and hatred, they were blinded and they were reckless.

Ellie couldn't count how many close calls she's had, and she's sure Tommy felt the same way. She had to kill Abby, even if she wanted to live a normal life. She couldn't sleep and she couldn't eat knowing she was still out there. She couldn't pretend that nothing happened like Dina did. She was so quick to push down her grief when she found out Jesse died, and she was so eager to act like what they went through in pursuit of revenge never existed. She wanted to play pretend at a nice, warm, wholesome and normal family, but Ellie couldn't. She tried, but she couldn’t any longer.

She couldn't rest easy, or die peacefully knowing Abby was out there and didn't get what she deserved. And with Tommy losing an eye, a brother and a wife, and Jesse dying among other people who had died on her path of destruction, they shouldn't die for nothing. Jesse and Tommy risked their lives going on a wild hunt with Ellie and Jesse lost his life due to it. He shouldn't have died for nothing. Ellie had to see through to this to the end.

And that was what she did.

She avenged Joel, but at what cost?

Her biggest fear was being alone. And now she is alone.

So she'll walk, leaving behind a home she once cherished. Leaving behind friends and family she loved. She couldn't be with them, not after what she put them through, not when her hands still shake with the blood that coats them, not when her sleep is still being tormented with the images of Abby instead of Joel. But she'll keep walking until the soles of her worn out converse sneakers are ripped, and her socks are ruined, and her feet are bloodied.

She'll walk while Joel sits in the backseat, forever watching over her.


End file.
